I am taking R&R from approximately 15 July to 5 August. I ill fly out of Baghdad and return to the states for two weeks of mid-tour leave. During this time, expect my posting to be sporadic at best, as I’ll be doing some traveling and spending time with the wifey. I’ll let you know when I’m back in Sandland and we return to our regularly scheduled program.

It’s taken me some time to get back into the swing of things.

After staying with us for a week, my Mom went home on Sunday. We had a blast, and it kept me busy. The best part was going to a flea market in town; we spent all afternoon there and didn’t even see everything there was to see. I’d also like to thank my wife for being so wonderful and supportive through all of this. I love you more than anything, Stephanie.

This week, I played catch-up at work, and I’m still playing it. The e-mails are coming in faster than I can get through them. I flew Monday and Tuesday to maintain my currency since I haven’t flown in some time; we’re required to fly at least once every 60 days to maintain currency, but as a pilot in command, I also need to stay proficient. In total, I flew 6.7 hours toodling around the local flying area. Slowly but surely, I am also catching up on work.

I’ve felt really drained the last couple of weeks due to what we all went through several weeks ago with Wally, I’m sure. Last Monday, I went to the barbershop and actually fainted; that’s never happened to me before. I was sitting in the barber’s chair and I started to sweat and felt really light-headed. My vision began to blur around the edges, and the sounds became distant, as if they were coming through a tunnel. I stood up to pay, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor. I drank some water, put a cool rag on the back of my neck, and felt fine after five or ten minutes.

Today I came home from work with a splitting headache and immediately went to sleep for a couple hours. I woke up feeling fine.

Needless to say, I’ve been very busy and haven’t had any time to write. I hope to catch up on sleep this weekend and, with any luck, I will start writing again on Saturday.

We just got back from a memorial service for Wally, my stepdad, at the Pensacola Federal Penitentiary Camp, Saufley Field. He had worked there since April of 2006. It was a beautiful service, and I was very impressed by the people there, many of whom talked about what a great person Wally was and how he had touched their lives. My mom received a plaque in appreciation for Wally’s service, a United States flag from the warden, and a second flag which had been flown over the White House. Afterwards, they showed a video that they had prepared to honor Wally while we ate lunch.

What follows is the speech that I gave during the memorial service. It was very difficult to get through the whole thing, but I wanted everyone there to know more about Wally and what an incredible man he was; It was just something I had to do.

My name is Joseph John. Wally was my stepdad and has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

My mom first met Wally in 1972, when he started working at Saint Joseph’s Center for Mental Health in Omaha, Nebraska. At the time, she was married to my dad. However, as my wife Stephanie knows, being married doesn’t stop you from looking — sorry, Steph — and years later, my mom told me that the first time she saw Wally, she asked her friends and coworkers who the good-looking new guy was.

Well, 14-years later, my mom went on her first date with the good-looking new guy, and they married on December 19, 1987 in the Little Brown Church in Nashua, Iowa. I was 11 years old.

We lived in Nebraska for several more years until Wally got a job at the Rochester Federal Penitentiary in Minnesota. We moved to Adams, where I went to Junior High and High School. After I went off to college, Wally and my mom moved back to Omaha to take care of my grandpa, who had Alzheimers, and, after he passed away, they moved to Saint Joseph, Missouri, where Wally worked at the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.

Six months ago, they sold their house in Missouri and moved to Pensacola, where they had planned to retire and spend the rest of their lives together. On the day before his heart stopped and he went into a coma, Wally said to my mom, “I love it down here.”

He never got a chance to take his boat out on the ocean. Wally loved to fish. I remember the time we went out on the Missouri River, and he hooked the biggest Northern Pike I’ve ever seen. Well, actually I never saw it, because it was one of those “the one that got away” stories, but we named it “Moses” and went back several times hoping to hook him again, but we never did.

Once, we went fishing on a lake in South Dakota. My mom said to Wally, “Don’t you want to take an extra gas can?” and Wally said, “No, I don’t need an extra gas can.”

As the sun sank toward the horizon and the storm clouds rolled in, we decided to call it a day, but unfortunately, we ran out of gas. Thankfully, my mom thought to tip the gas can on its side, and she kept priming the pump until Wally was able steer us to the nearest shoreline.

Another time, we went out fishing on a lake in Canada. When we expressed our concern about getting lost, Wally had the bright idea to just follow the same string of islands back in that we had followed out. Unfortunately, when we turned around to go home, none of us could remember which island was which, and Wally wasn’t the kind of guy to stop and ask for directions.

Growing up, Wally was always there for me and for his sons, Jeff and Jeremy. Whether it was football, basketball, baseball, Tae Kwon Do, or something else we were involved in, if Wally could be there, he would be there. He never missed the important parts of our growing up because he was hanging out with the guys or because he had more important things to do. We were the most important things in the world to him – his three sons and his wife.

I’ll never forget Wally driving around the parking lot, searching each row until he found the closest place to park. I won’t forget how he used to point something out to his right while he was driving, and his forearm would be inches from my mom’s nose, and it would drive her nuts. I won’t forget how I backed the car into a tree once while arguing with him. I won’t forget that he taught me how to drive a stick shift, and when I popped the clutch and spun his Bronco almost 180 degrees, he just said, “Well, let’s not do that again.” I won’t forget how he used to watch every Missouri basketball game or tape the ones he couldn’t be there to see. I won’t forget the way he used to pick me up when he hugged me. I won’t forget how good he was to my mom, how easy he was to talk to, or how much I love him. I owe much of who I am today to Wally, and I won’t forget that, either.

Wally was 56 when he died, and although we are left with many wonderful memories of him, I can’t help but feel that there should have been many more.

We’ll miss you Wally, and we’ll never forget you and how much you meant to us. We love you.

Check out the tribute to Walter Armentrout that was posted on the Phillips Films blog. You can learn more about Voice of the Dead, the movie in which Wally played Bob the Butler, here.

On the day my stepdad’s heart stopped beating, we found a puppy.

I was with my wife, Stephanie, and we were on our way home from the movie theater. We saw The Number 23, starring Jim Carey. Not a bad flick, but not a great one, either.

It was running down the side of the road, and at first I thought it was a cat. As we got closer, I realized it was a puppy, maybe two months old, and it was alone. I pulled my Nissan XTerra onto the side of the road.

“What is it?” Stephanie asked. For the last two weeks, she had been wearing glasses instead of contacts in preparation for her corrective eye surgery. Wearing them gave her a headache, and she took them off whenever she got the chance. She put them back on now.

“Look,” I said, pointing.

“Oh, no.”

I got out of the car.

Its fur was a light beige, almost white, its tail a frantic pendulum of motion. I crouched down and he — I saw that it was a he now — jumped up, front paws on my thigh as he licked my cheek.

We stopped at the few businesses on the road, asking if anyone knew where the puppy had came from. No one did. We ended up bringing it home with us, giving it food and water while we called the animal shelter.

After we dropped it off, I felt horrible about it, even though I knew we had done the right thing. I kept imagining what it must be thinking, how happy it had been to be home with us, its new family, then its confusion when we left it at the shelter to be put in a cage. Why? It must have been thinking. Why are you leaving me here alone?

Back at the house, I was changing into some sweatpants and a t-shirt and getting ready to start in on Part III of The Eighth Day when the telephone rang. It was my mom.

“Joey,” she said. “Wally’s had a heart attack. The doctors don’t think he’s going to make it.” I could hear in her voice that she was having a hard time holding it together.

“No!” A single syllable of denial, flat and bleak.

“I need you down here with me. Put Stephanie on the phone.”

I gave the telephone to my wife, who looked at me in confusion. I raced into the other room and changed back into the clothes I had worn to the movie. Stephanie copied down the directions to the hospital and we grabbed some toiletries, the dog and his food, and put some food out for the cat. Then we left, out the door in less than five minutes.

Stephanie drove. I was crying uncontrollably in the passenger seat. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Wally was my stepdad. He had been married to my mom for almost 20 years. He had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember.

He was only 56 years old.

The drive to Pensacola, Florida took us two and a half hours. Wally was unconscious in the emergency room. I hugged my mom. We cried, we talked, and we cried some more. They moved Wally up to critical care, and the next several days remain a blur in my memory, bits and pieces of a nightmare that I will never forget.

Jeff and Jeremy, Wally’s sons and my stepbrothers, arrived the next day, on Sunday. His brother and brother’s wife, Bob and Deb, arrived on Monday. On Tuesday, the neurologist told us that Wally had been without oxygen for over ten minutes before they were able to resuscitate him in the ambulance using those shock paddles you see in movies. His chances of recovering were as close to zero as you could get.

We all talked about it, but we all knew what Wally wanted. We took him off life support the following day, and he moved to Hospice, one floor down, on Thursday. For the next four days, we didn’t leave his side. He lay helpless in his bed as we remembered him as a father, as a husband, and as a friend.

Wally taught me how to drive a stick-shift. Once, we ran out of gas in the middle of a lake. He always had to drive around the parking lot to find the closest place to park. He used to point when he was driving, and if you were in the passenger seat, his forearm would be inches from your nose, and it would drive us nuts. He loved Missouri basketball and hardly ever missed a game. There was a Northern Pike that we dubbed “Moses” after a fierce battle on the river in which the fish escaped. So many memories, but he was only 56, and there should have been so many more. It wasn’t fair. It isn’t fair.

For the next four days, we waited for him to die, yet we never gave up hope. He still looked so alive, and we kept expecting him to open his eyes and sit up, but he didn’t. Listening to the rattle of his inhalations and exhalations was hell. We cried and cried until we could cry no more. I was emotionally drained, numb; I think we all were. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

Everyone called. Everyone wanted to know what was going on. How was Wally doing? How is your mom? How are you? I swear the phone rang at least once every fifteen minutes. There were so many people who loved Wally, so many people who would miss him when he was gone.

On Sunday, eight days after I had received that damned phone call from my mom, Wally inhaled, exhaled, and did not inhale again. The room was quiet. He was gone.

Wally, I love you. You were a wonderful husband. Thank you for taking care of my mom. You were like a father to me, too. Thank you for always being there for us, for me. We will miss you, but we’re going to be okay. It’s going to be hard, but we’ll get through this.

We’ll never forget you though. Never.

My wife, Stephanie, had surgery last Friday for a deviated septum and a polyp in her nose.  I won’t go into all the gory details, but you can read more about it on her blog if you are so inclined.  Although it was a rough couple days, she has pretty much fully recovered now and …

Note: The rest of this post has been lost within the tubes of the internet. My apologies.

I’m in the bathroom at a gas station dropping the kids off at the pool when I hear a knock at the door and the doorknob rattle. Obviously there is someone in the bathroom, so I don’t bother to say anything. A minute later, another knock and another rattle. I’m washing my hands — almost done, buddy. I’m drying my hands when there is another rattle and I hear someone say, “I guess there’s someone in the bathroom,” rather loudly. Well, duh. I unlock the door, step outside, and am greeted by an frowning, middle-aged face.

“What’s up,” I say. He only stares at me.

“How’s it going,” I try again. Still no answer.

As he brushes passed me, I say “Well, you’re a friendly fellow,” and finally give up and head toward the refrigerated beverages to grab myself a Red Bull.

Rude things that annoy me on the interstate:

1) Slower traffic keep right. This doesn’t mean that, if you’re traveling faster than someone a quarter-mile down the road, you should remain in the left-hand lane until you pass them, heedless of the line of cars piling up behind you and waiting to get by. You aren’t the only damn car on the road. Get the hell over and let the faster traffic pass you, even if it means you might have to turn off your cruise for a minute or two.

2) I seem to be the only person who waits in the right-hand lane when I see a faster car approaching on the left, slowing down to let them pass me. Whenever I get in the left-hand lane to pass someone, it never fails that they will cut over in front of me to pass the car in front of them, refusing to turn off their cruise control and forcing me to jam on my brakes and wait for them to pass, which inevitable will lead back to #1 above.

3) If you stay in the long line of cars the builds up in the left hand-lane as a result of #1 and remain 3-5 seconds behind the car in front of you, it never fails that someone will come zipping down the right hand-lane and cut in front of you, forcing you to once again jam on your brakes
to make room. One time, I passed a car, got stuck in the left-hand lane line, and got passed on the right by this same car, who cut back in front of me. I passed him three times, and he kept re-passing me on the right and cutting back in front of me when I had to slow down in the left-hand lane line. Seriously, what extra time did he gain? Get to the end of the line and wait your turn, buddy.